A few weeks ago, TEENage spoke with Lisa Hanna and Warren Newby, two politicians who serve the youth.

Hanna, who held a seat in Parliament before it was dissolved just over two weeks ago in preparation for the December 29 general election, is the Opposition spokeswoman on youth, sports and culture, while Newby was a Government senator and the incumbent junior minister of youth, sports and culture.

TEENage: The month of November is celebrated as Youth Month worldwide, but what does the month represent to/for you?

Hanna (LH): National Youth Month is a time when youth around the world actually get together and commemorate actives that are important to their own development. Here in Jamaica typically, Youth Month is celebrated by some of these same activities, whether it is with youth training or the launching of particular programmes.

Newby (WN): It represents an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of our young people. Also, it is an opportunity to salute the outstanding among them and showcase the offerings and opportunities that young people can have access to locally.

TEENage: Do you think that there is enough awareness of Youth Month?

LH: I think that there is an awareness of Youth Month, but I just don’t think that we are focusing on the right messages that we need to tell our youth. We need to tell them the truth about the state of the economy in the country. We need to tell them the truth about how it will impact on the their lives and the quality of their lives moving forward. We need to tell them the truth about what is critical for their own development moving forward. Those are the things that we should be focusing on for Youth Month, not only short term activities geared towards making the youth feeling “nice” in the short term. But our youth needs to understand the truth about what the country is going through.

WN: No, there isn’t. More effort has to be made to make it become a household undertaking. Beyond that November is the selective celebratory period for a number activities such as entrepreneurship, community month, local government month, among other activities. It really is a month of high activity as far as the national events are.

TEENage: What do you feel are the biggest challenges facing the Jamaican Youth?

LH: As a country we are not growing, and we have a significant amount of debt.

WN: I would say access to employment is the single greatest challenge.

TEENage: Within your capacity as the shadow spokesperson on youth and culture, how do you propose to mitigate these challenges?

LH: We are actually focusing on cultural industries. We have a targeted approach in terms of giving our youth access to opportunities and jobs. The good thing about cultural industries as well is that you retain within the country a tremendous amount of the profits. The cultural brand of Jamaica is great around the world, and our young people are very adept at programming into this brand. They understand what it means to be tech savvy and they are talented in terms of music and in terms of art as well. We will be targeting our schools to make sure that you are trained in this area and at the end of it we will provide you with a job. Also, we need to get into schools at the primary school and the secondary school level and tell them that we are no longer competing against ourselves. But we are competing in a global environment where their skills will be important in building this country and that it is why it is important for them to get a skill.

WN: We believe that the challenges have to be solved through three components. The first is education. So many of the young people we meet who are applying for work or want to work have no certification. That is why we are so proud of Heart Trust/NTA, which over the last four years has certified over 100,000 young persons. The first approach is to make them certified. Secondly, we have to make them multi-skilled. The countries that have responded best to the world economic crisis have a multi-skilled workforce. We are emphasising that everyone should have a vocational skill, while pushing for a basic matriculation level for all our youth. This is being done through the Career Advancement Programme (CAP), the National Youth Service (NYS) and through the Ministry of Education. Thirdly, through entrepreneurship with key focus on innovation and risk taking. We have to be encouraging our young persons that your idea must satisfy a demand. You must be in a position to reasonably undertake the business venture. The Government must provide certain inherent guarantees that will enable the success of the business, such as a stable interest rate, stable exchange rate, access to markets, and a simplified and easily accessible and understood tax system that underpin all entrepreneurship, whether youth or otherwise. Government should also provide access to incubators and venture capital. We have set up a venture capital fund for youth businesses in partnership with an NGO called the Jamaica Youth Business Trust. We placed $20 million as the start-up for it. We also have the Youth Entrepreneurship Programme.

TEENage: Do you believe that these are feasible in light of global economic conditions that hint that there is a high possibility for a second recession?

LH: There are ways to manage the resources you have: To cut waste out of the public sector and to run it more efficiently and to look and restructure your debt, in terms of how you are going to be repaying that debt.

WN: Yes, since this year over 20 persons have gained loans from the Youth Business Trust. If you compute them to be creating on average three jobs, it means that since this particular effort, over 60 young persons have found themselves in sustainable employment. People may look at it and say, “Well that’s a small number”, but what it represents is the development of a best practice that we can expand on.

TEENage: If you became the minister of youth, sports and culture, what would be your first priority?

LH: To put all youth initiatives under one ministry. Currently, you have youth initiatives in security, agriculture, education, and in health. What happens is you’re splintering costs across the board.

WN: To push mainstreaming. Youth mainstreaming in a nutshell is to have all government agencies, NGOs and the private sector to embrace youth development as a part of their mandate. That enables far greater resources to be available for youth development and it realigns the focus of the nation on this critical grouping because if they are empowered it solves so many of the issues we have. The community based youth organisations. We have put in a constitution for the National Youth Council and we have brought in all other affiliates to be a part of the Youth Council and we are working with them through the Social Development Commission and the National Centre for Youth Development to strengthen the capacity for Youth Development. And also value streaming through sports. We need a vehicle to carry the message of productivity, the message of wellness, the message of sexual reproductive health and conflict resolution to reduce violence and incidences of HIV/AIDS amongst TEENagers and to lift productivity values so people can understand how lateness, teamwork, and time management and quality affect output.

TEENage: What words of advice or encouragement can you give to the aspiring Jamaican youth — whatever their ambition may be?

LH: Don’t see yourself as only operating within your local community, see yourself operating in a global economy. Where it is you want to get to is another story. You need to stay in school, pursue excellence at all costs and make sure that whatever it is you inspire to do will not only benefit yourself, but also the country.

WN: Don’t quit, because when you quit you lose.